Tag: Donald Trump

Trading surge hits markets minutes before Trump’s Iran announcement
S&P 500 futures and crude oil contracts on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) at approximately 6:50 a.m. ET Monday—mere minutes before President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social that the United States and Iran had held “very good and productive conversations” toward resolving hostilities in the Middle East.
The timing has raised eyebrows across trading desks and prompted quiet scrutiny from market participants, even as the White House forcefully denies any impropriety.
According to Bloomberg data reviewed by multiple outlets, roughly 6,200 Brent and West Texas Intermediate (WTI) futures contracts traded in a single minute around 6:50 a.m., representing a notional value of approximately $580 million.
At virtually the same instant, S&P 500 e-mini futures recorded an isolated burst of activity that stood out against an otherwise subdued pre-market session. Both oil and equity futures then moved dramatically once Trump’s post appeared at 7:05 a.m.

WTI crude plunged nearly 12% to around $83–$88 per barrel by the close, while Brent fell below $100 for the first time since early March. S&P 500 futures, by contrast, jumped more than 2.5% in the minutes following the announcement, reflecting investor relief that planned U.S. strikes on Iranian energy infrastructure had been postponed for five days.

The volume anomalies occurred during thin early-morning liquidity, when even modest order flow can create noticeable spikes. Still, veteran traders described the coordinated moves—aggressive selling or shorting of oil while buying equity futures—as unusually prescient.
“It’s hard to prove causality… but you have to wonder who would have been relatively aggressive at selling futures at that point, 15 minutes before Trump’s post,” one senior market strategist at a major U.S. broker told the Financial Times. Another hedge-fund portfolio manager with 25 years of experience called the pattern “really abnormal” for a quiet Monday morning with no scheduled data releases or Fed speakers.

The SEC and CME Group declined to comment. White House spokesperson Kush Desai rejected any suggestion of insider activity, stating: “The only focus of President Trump and Trump administration officials is doing what’s best for the American people… any implication that officials are engaged in such activity without evidence is baseless and irresponsible reporting.”
Markets React to De-Escalation — For Now
Trump’s Truth Social post described “productive conversations” with Iran and ordered the postponement of strikes on Iranian power plants and energy infrastructure for five days, subject to continued talks. Iran’s parliament speaker, Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, quickly denied that any negotiations were underway, calling the claim “fake news” designed to manipulate oil and financial markets.

Oil prices, which had climbed aggressively in recent sessions on fears of supply disruption through the Strait of Hormuz, reversed sharply. WTI settled down roughly 10–12% at $83–$88 per barrel, while Brent dropped 11–13% to just under $100. European natural gas (TTF) also fell sharply.
The moves provided temporary relief to risk assets but highlighted how fragile sentiment remains. Morgan Stanley analysts warned that a sustained rise to $120 per barrel oil could shave 20–30 basis points off Asian GDP growth and force rate hikes in several emerging economies later this year.
A Pattern of Well-Timed Trades?
This is not the first instance of unusually prescient trading ahead of major Trump administration announcements in recent months. Hedge funds and energy consultants have privately noted several large block trades that appeared well-timed relative to official statements on Iran and Venezuela.
While such patterns are difficult to prove as improper without concrete evidence, they have generated “a level of frustration” among institutional investors, according to one portfolio manager.
Algorithmic and macro strategies can produce rapid cross-asset flows, especially in thin pre-market hours, but the scale and precision of Monday’s moves—selling oil and buying equities just before a de-escalation announcement—left many questioning whether non-public information circulated.
Political and Market Context
The episode unfolds against a backdrop of heightened geopolitical tension and domestic political pressure on the Trump administration’s aggressive posture toward Iran. While Trump framed the postponement as a sign of progress, critics argue the administration’s brinkmanship has already inflicted economic pain through elevated energy prices and market volatility.
For now, the market appears to be pricing in cautious optimism that a wider conflict can be avoided. Yet with Iran denying talks and both sides continuing information operations, the “fog of war” remains thick.
Investors would be wise to treat headline-driven moves with skepticism—especially when large, well-timed trades precede them.
March 23, 2026
Iran threatens to target Middle East energy and water infrastructure amid U.S. escalation warning
Tehran has said it will “irreversibly destroy” essential infrastructure across the Middle East, including vital water systems, if the US follows through on Donald Trump’s threat to “obliterate” Iran’s power plants unless the strait of Hormuz is fully opened within two days.
As Iranian missiles struck two southern Israeli cities overnight, injuring dozens of people, and Tehran deployed long-range missiles for the first time, the developments signalled a dangerous potential escalation of the war, now in its fourth week, with both sides threatening facilities relied on by millions of people.

The speaker of the Iranian parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, said on Sunday that vital infrastructure in the region – including energy and desalination facilities – would be considered a legitimate target and would be “irreversibly destroyed” if his country’s own infrastructure was attacked.
Amnesty International said this month there was a substantial risk that attacks on systems providing essential services such as electricity, heating and running water would violate international law and “in some cases could amount to war crimes” because of the potential for “vast, predictable, and devastating civilian harm”.
The Iranian military’s operational command headquarters, Khatam al-Anbiya, said Iran would strike “all energy, information technology and desalination infrastructure” belonging to the US and Israel in the region.
The statement also said that if Trump’s threat was carried out, the strait of Hormuz would be “completely closed, and will not be reopened until our destroyed power plants are rebuilt”.
Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, said “threats and terror” were “only strengthening Iranian unity”, while the “illusion of erasing Iran from the map” showed “desperation against the will of a history-making nation”.

Guardian graphic. Source: Global Water Intelligence, desaldata.com
The US president said on Saturday that he was giving Iran 48 hours – until shortly before midnight GMT on Monday – to open the strait of Hormuz, a vital pathway for the world’s oil flows, or the US would “hit and obliterate” Iranian power plants “starting with the biggest one first”.
The US ambassador to the UN, Mike Waltz, defended Trump’s threat on Sunday, insisting that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) controlled much of the country’s infrastructure and used it to power its war effort.
He said Trump would start by destroying one of Iran’s largest power plants, but did not identify it. “There are gas-fired thermal power plants and other type of plants,” and “the president is not messing around”, he said.
A No 10 spokesperson said Keir Starmer spoke to Trump on Sunday evening about the need to reopen the strait of Hormuz.
Iran’s representative to the International Maritime Organisation, Ali Mousavi, said on Sunday that the strait was open to all shipping except vessels linked to “Iran’s enemies”, with passage possible by coordinating security arrangements with Tehran.
Iranian attacks have in effect closed the narrow strait, which carries about a fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas supplies, causing the world’s worst oil crisis since the 1970s and sending European gas prices surging by as much as 35% last week.
Only a relatively small number of vessels, estimated at about 5% of the prewar volume, from countries that Tehran considers friendly – including China, India and Pakistan – have been allowed to pass.

A Tehran billboard featuring a portrait of the late supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. (AFP/Getty Images)
More than 2,000 people have been killed in Iran since 28 February, when the US and Israel began their attacks, and Tehran in turn has struck targets in Israel and the Gulf states. Lebanon was drawn in after Iran-backed Hezbollah attacked Israel.
Air raid sirens sounded across Israel from the early hours of Sunday morning, warning of incoming missiles from Iran after scores of people were injured overnight in two separate attacks on the southern towns of Arad and Dimona.
The Israeli army said on Sunday morning that it would strike Tehran in retaliation. The country’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said during a visit to Arad that senior IRGC commanders would be pursued.
“We’re going after the regime. We’re going after the IRGC, this criminal gang,” he said. “We’re going after them personally, their leaders, their installations, their economic assets.”
The Iranian health ministry spokesperson, Hossein Kermanpour, said patients had been evacuated from the Imam Ali hospital in the south-west city of Andimeshk on Sunday after an airstrike a day earlier.

Bomb damage in Arad, Israel. (Amir Levy/Getty Images)
Israel’s military said it had not been able to intercept the missiles that hit Dimona and Arad, the nearest large towns to the country’s nuclear centre in the Negev desert, which houses what is widely believed to be the Middle East’s only nuclear arsenal.
Israel has never admitted to possessing nuclear weapons, insisting that the site is for research. The strikes marked the first time that Iranian missiles had penetrated Israel’s air defence systems in the area.

The strikes wounded about 200 people, including a 12-year-old boy and a five-year-old girl, both reported to be in a serious condition. The Israeli broadcaster Channel 13 reported early indications of possible deaths but there was no official confirmation.

Iran said the attacks had been launched in response to a strike on its main nuclear enrichment facility at Natanz on Saturday. Israel denied responsibility for the attack and the Pentagon declined to comment.
In Tel Aviv, 15 more people were injured on Sunday morning in a separate incident involving a cluster bomb. The attacks are adding to mounting pressure on Israel’s air defence systems as Iranian strikes increasingly test their limits.
The World Health Organization said that the war was at a “perilous stage” and called for restraint. “Attacks targeting nuclear sites create an escalating threat to public health and environmental safety,” the WHO director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said.
Tehran also fired long-range missiles for the first time on Saturday, the Israeli military chief, Eyal Zamir, said. Two ballistic missiles with a range of 2,500 miles (4,000km) were fired at the US-British Indian Ocean military base at Diego Garcia, he said.

Guardian graphic
The British cabinet minister Steve Reed said one missile had fallen short and the other had been intercepted. There was no assessment backing claims that Iran was planning to strike Europe, he said.
The Israel Defense Forces had said Iran had missiles that could reach London, Paris or Berlin, but Reed said he was not aware of any assessment at all that Iran was even trying to target Europe, “let alone that they could if they tried”.
He said in a separate interview that Trump had been “speaking for himself” when he threatened to obliterate Iran’s power plants.
Analysts said Trump’s threat had placed “a 48-hour ticking timebomb of elevated uncertainty” over energy and financial markets, with a “black Monday” of plunging stock markets and surging energy prices looming unless it was rowed back.

Guardian graphic
At least six overnight attacks targeted a US diplomatic and logistics centre at Baghdad airport, Iraqi officials said, while Saudi Arabia said three missiles had been detected over Riyadh. The UAE said it had responded to Iranian missile and drone attacks.
In southern Lebanon, Israel said its military had raided Hezbollah sites on Sunday and killed 10 of the group’s fighters. It said it was expanding its ground campaign in Lebanon, warning of a lengthy operation. Hezbollah said it had attacked several border areas in northern Israel. One person was killed in an Israeli kibbutz, emergency services said.
At least 10 Palestinians were injured on Sunday night in attacks in the occupied West Bank by Israeli settlers who rampaged through nearby villages after holding a funeral for a settler killed in a car crash a night earlier.
Videos obtained by the Associated Press appeared to show cars and homes set ablaze as army flares lit up the sky near the village east of Nablus and next to the Israeli settlement of Elon Moreh.
Three Turkish nationals, including a soldier, and three Qatari service personnel were killed when a helicopter crashed in Qatar’s territorial waters, the country’s defence ministry said on Sunday.
According to an academic analysis seen by Reuters, an interceptor missile that injured dozens of civilians in Bahrain 10 days into the war was probably fired by a US-operated Patriot air defence battery.
Manama and Washington have blamed an Iranian drone attack for the explosion on 9 March, which Bahrain has said injured 32 people including children, some of them seriously.
March 22, 2026
China positions itself as ‘Harbour of Stability’ to global CEOs amid U.S.–Iran tensions
China sought to woo global chief executives including Apple’s Tim Cook, UBS’s Sergio Ermotti and HSBC’s Georges Elhedery in Beijing on Sunday, touting the country’s safety and reliability in stark contrast to a US bogged down in war with Iran.
Premier Li Qiang told more than 70 chief executives gathered in the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse for the government’s annual Davos-style forum that the world’s second-largest economy offered an unmatched supply chain and a predictable commercial environment.
The country was committed to being a “cornerstone of certainty” and a “harbour of stability” in the face of rising trade protectionism and upheaval in the rules-based international order, said Li.
“China will unswervingly promote high-level opening up to the outside, import more high-quality foreign goods and work with all parties to promote the optimised and balanced development of trade, jointly expanding the global economic and trade pie,” he told the audience.
The conference, the China Development Forum, is held every year in late March after the meeting of the country’s rubber-stamp parliament. It acts as the leadership’s vehicle for pressing its talking points on global CEOs.
This year, Beijing is selling its latest five-year economic plan to 2030 as an opportunity for foreign investment.

“Li didn’t name America . . . but the message is clear that China is now safer, more reliable and stable, and more focused on economic development rather than conflicts,” said George Chen, a partner at the Asia Group consultancy who was present at the meeting.

The conference comes amid widening concern over China’s huge trade surplus, which hit a record $1.2tn last year. In Europe, there are worries that low-cost Chinese imports are eliminating jobs.

The five-year plan largely doubles down on China’s manufacturing-oriented high-tech industrial policy, raising fears of an even greater shock to western factories.

People’s Bank of China governor Pan Gongsheng defended the country’s exports in a speech on Sunday about global economic “rebalancing”.

Pan rejected the claim that China’s competitiveness was a result of government subsidies, attributing it to economic reforms, the size of its domestic market and the strength of its supply chains and research.

Without naming the US, he described some countries’ persistent trade deficits as being the result of “an international monetary system dominated by a single sovereign currency”.

Jeanine Pirro takes aim at the ruling by James Boasberg on Friday. (Reuters)
Other business leaders on the invitee list this year include Siemens’ Roland Busch, Volkswagen’s Oliver Blume, SK Hynix’s Kwak Noh-jung, Nestlé’s Philipp Navratil, Mercedes-Benz’s Ola Källenius, KKR’s Joseph Bae, Cargill’s Brian Sikes, Standard Chartered’s Bill Winters and Boston Consulting Group’s Christoph Schweizer.

US executives were well represented this year, accounting for 45 per cent of invitees, according to an analysis by Han Shen Lin of the Asia Group. Europeans made up 36 per cent with the remainder from Asia, Australia and elsewhere.

Financial services dominated, accounting for about 22 per cent of invitees, while those from the energy sector were only about 4 per cent.

Apple chief executive Cook delivered a speech after Li on opportunities in education and other areas in China.
Unlike in the previous two forums, President Xi Jinping is not expected to meet top executives this year, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Asia Group’s Chen said Li’s speech was the most confident he had seen in recent years, though the premier refrained from directly criticising US President Donald Trump.

Trump, who recently postponed a meeting expected on April 1 with Xi in Beijing, is still widely expected to be planning a visit this year.

On Saturday evening, vice-premier He Lifeng, the economic tsar running trade negotiations with the US, held a dinner with a group of mostly European executives to tout the country’s five-year plan.

The executives mostly praised China and talked up their own companies, said one of the people present at the dinner, but there was some discussion of Chinese overcapacity and the risks for European industry.
March 21, 2026
Trump praises Japan’s support in Iran war during White House meeting with PM Sanae Takaichi
In an apparent awkward moment at the Oval Office on Thursday stateside, U.S. President Donald Trump referenced Pearl Harbor in his first meeting with Japan’s Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi after her landslide electoral victory.
When asked by a Japanese reporter on why the U.S. did not inform allies such as Japan before carrying out the attacks against Iran on Feb. 28, the U.S. president said it was to maintain the element of surprise.
“Who knows better about surprise than Japan … Why didn’t you tell me about Pearl Harbor?”
Trump was referencing the surprise Japanese attack on the U.S. Pacific Fleet in 1941, which saw the deaths of over 2,400 personnel and drew the U.S. into World War II.
Takaichi appeared to draw a deep breath and lean back in her seat with an uneasy expression.
“Who knows better about surprise than Japan … Why didn’t you tell me about Pearl Harbor?”
Donald Trump U.S. President
Trump said that the surprise attack on Iran had helped the U.S., adding that it “knocked out 50% of what we anticipated” in the country within the first two days.
During the meeting, Trump praised Japan for “stepping up” to assist in efforts to secure the Strait of Hormuz, “unlike NATO.“
Before the meeting, Japan, as well as Britain, France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands had released a joint statement expressing their readiness to “contribute to appropriate efforts to ensure safe passage through the Strait.”
Trump had called on Japan and other countries to help secure the Strait of Hormuz, but Takaichi had reportedly said Monday that there were no plans to dispatch naval vessels to escort boats in the Middle East.
Her office also said in a post on X that there was “no specific request from the United States to Japan for the dispatch of vessels.”
Japan’s prime minister on Tuesday said that the government was considering what could be done within the framework of the country’s law. Japan’s Self-Defense Forces are governed by its pacifist constitution, that renounces war and the threat or use of force for settling international disputes.
Trump had taken aim at NATO allies earlier this week, saying that the alliance was “making a very foolish mistake” by not getting involved in the war.
In response, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius reportedly said on Monday that “This is not our war, we have not started it,” a stance that was also adopted by French President Emmanuel Macron.
Subsequently, Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on Thursday that “we have declared that as long as the war continues, we will not participate in ensuring freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz, for example, by military means,” according to Reuters.
March 19, 2026
Donald Trump White House tries to sell war and death as a game
The White House has found a new recruit to sell the US war on Iran to an increasingly sceptical American public: SpongeBob SquarePants.
In a video posted by the White House on X, a clip of the cartoon character says, “do you want to see me do it again?” as unclassified footage of US missiles blowing up Iranian jets and trucks appears. The caption reads: “Will not stop until the objectives are met. Unrelenting. Unapologetic.”
An unlikely warmonger, SpongeBob SquarePants is just one of the internet memes harnessed by US officials in a propaganda campaign that has drawn heavily on video games, action movies and cartoons to celebrate American military prowess in Iran.
Will not stop until the objectives are met.

Unrelenting. Unapologetic. 🔁 pic.twitter.com/iM9fqjn1zc
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) March 5, 2026

Donald Trump’s White House has deployed a galaxy of pop-culture icons to hype up American martial virtues and divert attention from the growing human and economic devastation of the war.
“This is a memification and a gamification of war,” said Nick Cull, a historian of propaganda at USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. “It’s an appalling way to represent conflict.”
It is unclear how effective it’s been. An Ipsos poll this month found only 29 per cent of Americans approved of the US strikes in Iran and 43 per cent disapproved.
But Roger Stahl, professor of communications studies at the University of Georgia, said the purpose of the videos wasn’t necessarily to win over voters unconvinced about the wisdom of going to war against Iran.
“It’s to galvanise the Maga base with a kind of thrilling, easy-to-digest version of that conflict that appeals to the base instincts of gamers and people who think that war is just a series of one-liners from Hollywood,” he said. “But to probably 70 per cent of the population, a good majority at least, it’s just shocking.”
Perhaps the most striking video put out by the White House depicts the war as a Nintendo game, mixing footage of missile strikes with images from Wii Sports.
To a sprightly soundtrack, a cartoon player is shown scoring a bullseye, hitting a hole in one and bowling a strike, with each shot cutting to footage of missile strikes in Iran. An announcer bellows sporting clichés: “It’s Out of the Park!” “Slam Dunk!” and “Knockout!”
Another video along the same lines, entitled “JUSTICE THE AMERICAN WAY”, includes clips from Top Gun, Braveheart, Breaking Bad and the anime Dragon Ball Z, and ends with a voiceover saying “flawless victory”, lifted from the video game Mortal Kombat.
White House deputy communications director Kaelan Dorr reposted the clip with the caption “Wake up, Daddy’s Home”.
“They’re like ads for a knock-off Tom Cruise movie,” said Peter Loge, director of the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University.
“It hides the gruesome realities of conflict and war,” he went on. “You don’t feel the grief, you never see the aftermath of the conflict or the violence.”
The Justice video has drawn angry responses from some in Hollywood. Director and actor Ben Stiller, whose film Tropic Thunder was featured in the montage, demanded the White House remove the clip.
“We never gave you permission and have no interest in being a part of your propaganda machine,” he wrote on X. “War is not a movie.”
Even former members of the military have expressed disgust. “Sorry to be Debbie downer,” Connor Crehan, an Iraq war veteran and BarStool Sports host, wrote on X. “War isn’t a video game. The consequences of war are final. I wish we didn’t treat it with such a cavalier approach.”
The White House denied that it was trying to reduce the war to a game. “The legacy media wants us to apologize for highlighting the United States Military’s incredible success,” said spokeswoman Anna Kelly.
“But the White House will continue showcasing the many examples of Iran’s ballistic missiles, production facilities, and dreams of owning a nuclear weapon being destroyed in real time.”
The videos mark a big departure from the high moral tone normally adopted by US administrations entering into a global conflict.
When President Woodrow Wilson took the US into the first world war, he famously argued that “the world must be made safe for democracy”. In framing Operation Desert Storm in 1990, George HW Bush hailed the prospect of a “new world order” emerging from “these troubled times”.
“Traditionally the US government has spoken about war as something regrettable and necessary for a carefully considered diplomatic objective,” said Cull.
“They’ve sought to carry the American public with them . . . and persuade the world that it is in the best interests of humanity. And I don’t think those sorts of priorities are detectable in [Trump’s] messaging here.”
On the contrary, the videos seem squarely aimed at the president’s core supporters, especially the young men who voted for him in huge numbers in the 2024 presidential election.
Posts by White House officials over the past three weeks have been sprinkled with gamer and streamer slang. “W’s in the chat boys,” wrote Steven Cheung, Trump’s director of communications, above a video mixing strikes in Iran with an animation from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.
“Based Department? Yes. I’ll hold,” wrote Kaelan Dorr as he reposted another propaganda video on X, using the Gen Z word that means “bold” or “unapologetic”.
The clips build on a tradition established by the Department of Homeland Security last year. One viral video with the caption “Gotta Catch ‘Em All” showed ICE agents blowing in doors, and handcuffing and leading away undocumented immigrants to a song from the Pokemon cartoon. The clip was viewed 75.5mn times.
Loge compares Trump’s messaging style to pro wrestling. “He’s embracing the spectacle [of war] more than any of his predecessors have,” he said. But he warned that there was a risk for the White House that public support could collapse when the reality of the conflict hits home.
“It’s like turning on the lights on an amusement ride,” he said. “You can only suspend disbelief for so long.”
March 19, 2026
US Intelligence chief avoids contradicting Trump on Iran war threat claims
Donald Trump’s top spy chief refused to say whether Iran had posed an imminent threat to the US as the president claimed at the outset of the war.
Director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard struggled to avoid contradicting Trump as she and other top national security officials testified to the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday about the biggest security threats facing the country.
Pressed repeatedly on whether the intelligence community had assessed that Iran posed “an imminent nuclear threat” ahead of the start of the US-Israel attack on February 28 — one of the administration’s main justifications for the war — Gabbard said: “It is not the intelligence community’s responsibility to determine what is and is not an imminent threat. That is up to the president.”
Gabbard’s testimony at the intelligence committee’s annual global threats hearing came a day after another top intelligence official resigned over what he claimed were the administration’s “unfounded” justifications for the war, further amplifying doubts about a conflict that has killed 13 American service members so far.
In prepared opening remarks submitted to the committee ahead of her appearance, Gabbard said that Iran’s nuclear programme had been “obliterated” by US and Israeli strikes against the country’s nuclear sites last June.

“There has been no efforts since then to try to rebuild their enrichment capability,” she wrote in her statement.
But she veered from her prepared remarks when she addressed the Senate panel, saying that US intelligence believed that Iran had been “trying to recover” from the “severe damage” to its nuclear infrastructure before the renewed US-Israel strikes against the country.
When Mark Warner, the intelligence committee’s top Democrat, asked Gabbard why she had strayed from her written testimony, she responded that she had skipped the relevant section because her testimony “was running long”.
US officials have offered contradictory justifications for the war and the status of Iran’s nuclear programme, saying that Tehran was both “weeks” away from obtaining a nuclear bomb, and that its nuclear facilities had been “obliterated” by last year’s war.
At the start of her testimony Gabbard stressed she was presenting “the intelligence community’s assessment of the threats facing US citizens, our homeland and our interests” and not her personal views or opinions.
A combat veteran who has long opposed US military intervention overseas, Gabbard remained silent on the conflict until Tuesday when she posted a statement on X that repeated Trump’s justification for the war, but did not say whether she supported it.
Joe Kent, a close ally of Gabbard who was director of the National Counterterrorism Center, on Tuesday became the first senior US official to resign in protest at the war, saying that Tehran posed “no imminent threat to our nation”.
Kent’s resignation has raised questions about Gabbard’s future in the Trump administration and splits within his Maga movement which has long been opposed to US wars of regime change.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Wednesday she had no “knowledge” of whether Trump was considering firing Gabbard, but said it was “a question for him”.
Democrats expressed frustration during the hearing with the unwillingness of Gabbard and CIA director John Ratcliffe to answer questions about the information presented to the president ahead of his decision to go to war. FBI director Kash Patel and the leaders of the US defence and signals intelligence agencies also testified.
Gabbard told the committee that US intelligence had “long” assessed that Iran would likely use the Strait of Hormuz as leverage in the event of a crisis.
But both she and Ratcliffe declined to say whether they had given that assessment directly to the president ahead of the war. Gabbard did say that her agency assessed that Iran’s regime remained largely “intact” and would seek to reconstitute its military capabilities if they remained.
Trump said this week that his administration had been surprised by Iran’s retaliatory strikes against US allies in the Middle East. There appears to have been little preparation for the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a critical waterway through which 20 per cent of the world’s oil flows.
“We’re trying to figure out if the president knew what the downside was of the Strait of Hormuz being closed, and I’m having a hard time finding out whether the White House asked, or whether there was a brief, whether the president knew,” said Democratic senator Mark Kelly.
March 18, 2026
Trump Ally Warns U.S. Economy Too Weak to Withstand Iran War Shock
Donald Trump’s one-time pick to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics has said the US economy is too weak to handle oil at $100 per barrel as he warned of rising consumer prices triggered by the war in Iran.
“I don’t think this is an economy that is going to be able to handle $100 a barrel for oil, it’s just not,” EJ Antoni told the Financial Times.
“The economy is weaker than we thought it was, and inflation is worse than we thought it was,” he added in a call on Wednesday, shortly before the Federal Reserve’s March rate-setting meeting.
“The lower energy prices that we saw in 2025 helped put downward pressure on prices throughout the economy. Now . . . we’re going to see higher energy prices have exactly the opposite effect and put upward pressure on prices throughout the economy.”
Trump picked Antoni, the conservative Heritage Foundation’s chief economist, to lead the US labour statistics agency in August, shortly after firing the former commissioner for a gloomy jobs report the president claimed was “rigged”.
He abruptly withdrew Antoni’s nomination a month later and ultimately settled on government economist Brett Matsumoto, whose confirmation is subject to Senate approval.
Antoni’s remarks on the health of the world’s largest economy come a day after the director of the US National Counterterrorism Center resigned in protest at the Iran war, marking the first significant defection from the Trump administration since the conflict began.
Republicans are meanwhile growing increasingly worried that high oil prices — Brent crude jumped 5 per cent to almost $110 a barrel on Wednesday — will dent their chances in the midterm elections. Petrol prices at the pump have surged to $3.84 a gallon from $2.92 a month ago, while diesel has exceeded $5 — exerting a heavy toll on US consumers and businesses.
Economic data collected before the US and Israel launched their attack on Iran has done little to ease those concerns.
US GDP in the fourth quarter of 2025 was last week revised to 0.7 per cent from an initial estimate of 1.4 per cent, while data released on Wednesday showed US wholesale prices rose at a faster clip than expected in February, even before the war began. The US economy last month shed 92,000 jobs, in a sharp slide that eroded most of January’s gains.
Antoni highlighted “a lack of job growth” in the US, some of which he attributed to last year’s cuts to the federal workforce, and renewed his attacks on the BLS, which he likened to “a random number generator” in a post on X last May.
“You need a complete and total top-down review of everything from the data collection to the data processing and even the data dissemination, because there have been a few issues with leaks,” he said. In January, Trump posted some of December’s US jobs figures hours before their official release.
Antoni refused to be drawn on how Trump told him he was no longer his pick to lead the BLS, saying he would “rather keep those conversations confidential”.
March 18, 2026
Trump Mourns with Families at Dover as 6 Soldiers Killed in Iran War Return Home
President Donald Trump on Saturday joined grieving families at Dover Air Force Base at the dignified transfer for the six U.S. soldiers killed in the war in the Middle East.
The dignified transfer, a ritual that returns the remains of U.S. service members killed in action, is considered one of the most somber duties of any commander in chief. During his first term, Trump said bearing witness to the transfer was “the toughest thing I have to do” as president.
Trump, speaking at a summit of Latin American leaders in Miami before his trip to Delaware, said the fallen service members were heroes “coming home in a different manner than they thought they’d be coming home.” He said it was “a very sad situation” and he pledged to keep American war deaths “to a minimum.”

Both Trump and Vice President JD Vance were present for the transfer, as were their spouses. A host of top administration officials were in attendance, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who wrote in a social media post Friday of “an unbreakable spirit to honor their memory and the resolve they embodied”; Attorney General Pam Bondi, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, special envoy Steve Witkoff and Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence.
Also present for the solemn event were governors and senators from Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska and Florida.
Those killed in action were Maj. Jeffrey O’Brien, 45, of Indianola, Iowa; Capt. Cody Khork, 35, of Winter Haven, Florida; Chief Warrant Officer 3 Robert Marzan, 54, of Sacramento, California; Sgt. 1st Class Nicole Amor, 39, of White Bear Lake, Minnesota; Sgt. 1st Class Noah Tietjens, 42, of Bellevue, Nebraska; and Sgt. Declan Coady, 20, of West Des Moines, lowa, who was posthumously promoted from specialist.
As is protocol, Trump — wearing a blue suit, red tie and a white USA hat — did not speak during the transfer. The president saluted as each flag-draped transfer case was carried from the military aircraft to awaiting transfer vehicles, which would take them to a mortuary facility to prepare them for their final resting place. The families were largely silent as they observed the ritual, which lasted about a half hour.
The six members of the Army Reserve, who were killed by a drone strike at a command center in Kuwait, were all from the 103rd Sustainment Command based in Des Moines, Iowa, which provides food, fuel, water and ammunition, transport equipment and supplies. They died just one day after the U.S. and Israel launched its military campaign against Iran.
“These soldiers engaged in the most noble mission: protecting their fellow Americans and keeping our homeland secure,” Republican Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa, a combat veteran, said earlier this week after the six were identified. “Our nation owes them an incredible debt of gratitude that can never be repaid.”
During the ritual, transfer cases draped with the American flag and holding the remains of the fallen soldiers are carried from the military aircraft that transported them to an awaiting vehicle to take them to the mortuary facility at the base. There, the service members are prepared for their final resting place.
Amor’s husband, Joey Amor, said earlier this week that she had been scheduled to return home to him and their two children within days.
“You don’t go to Kuwait thinking something’s going to happen, and for her to be one of the first – it hurts,” Joey Amor said.
O’Brien had served in the Army Reserve for nearly 15 years, according to his LinkedIn account, and his aunt said in a post on Facebook that O’Brien “was the sweetest blue-eyed, blonde farm kid you’d ever know. He is so missed already.”
Marzan’s sister described him in a Facebook post as a “strong leader” and loving husband, father and brother.

A combination image of undated photos shows U.S. Army Reserve Captain Cody A. Khork, 35, of Winter Haven, Florida, U.S. Army Reserve Sgt. 1st Class Noah Tietjens, 42, of Bellevue, Nebraska, U.S. Army Reserve Sgt. 1st Class Nicole Amor, 39, of White Bear Lake, Minnesota, and U.S. Army Reserve Sgt. Declan Coady, 20, of West Des Moines, Iowa, who were killed March 1, 2026, at the Port of Shuaiba, Kuwait during a drone attack. (U.S. Army Reserve/Handout via Reuters)
“My baby brother, you are loved and I will hold onto all our memories and cherish them always in my heart,” Elizabeth Marzan wrote.
Coady was among the youngest people in his class, trained to troubleshoot military computer systems, but he impressed his instructors, his father, Andrew Coady, told The Associated Press.
“He trained hard, he worked hard, his physical fitness was important to him. He loved being a soldier,” Coady said. “He was also one of the most kindest people you would ever meet, and he would do anything and everything for anyone.”
Khork’s family described him as “the life of the party” who was known for his “infectious spirit” and “generous heart” and who had wanted to serve in the military since childhood.
“That commitment helped shape the course of his life and reflected the deep sense of duty that was always at the core of who he was,” according to a statement from his mother, Donna Burhans, his father, James Khork, and his stepmother, Stacey Khork.
Tietjens, who came from a military family, previously served alongside his father in Kuwait. When he returned home in February 2010, he reunited with his overjoyed wife in a local church’s gym.
Tietjens’ cousin Kaylyn Golike asked for prayers, especially for Tietjens’ 12-year-old son, wife and parents, as they navigate “unimaginable loss.”
Trump most recently traveled to Dover in December to honor two Iowa National Guard members and a U.S. civilian interpreter who were killed in an ambush attack in the Syrian desert. He attended dignified transfers several times during his first term, including for a Navy SEAL killed during a raid in Yemen, for two Army officers whose helicopter crashed in Afghanistan and for two Army soldiers killed in Afghanistan when a person dressed in an Afghan army uniform opened fire.
March 8, 2026
‘Regime Change by Jazz Improvisation’

Smoke from an oil refinery rises over residential buildings in southern Tehran after Israeli airstrikes. (Abedin Taherkenareh/EPA)
“Regime change by jazz improvisation.” Karim Sadjadpour’s phrase is not just clever — it is damning. It perfectly exposes the reckless, contradictory, and fundamentally dishonest mess that Donald Trump’s White House has unleashed on Iran and, by extension, on the entire world.
This is not foreign policy. This is a saxophone solo played by a president who campaigned on “America First” but has instead delivered “Israel First” on steroids, orchestrated by the same neoconservative warmongers, AIPAC donors, and Zionist ideologues who have hijacked U.S. strategy for decades.
Let’s be brutally honest about what is happening. Trump began the war with a midnight Truth Social post urging Iranians to rise up and overthrow their government, apparently convinced the Islamic Republic would collapse in 48 hours. When it didn’t, he pivoted within days — floating deals with regime insiders, praising the 2019 Venezuela operation (two arrests, no real change) as “perfect,” and letting Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Elbridge Colby insist this was not a regime-change war, merely a limited strike to “degrade” Iranian forces.

Then came the latest improvisation: Trump personally reaching out to Kurdish leaders in Iran and Iraq, dangling U.S. support if they help topple Tehran and redraw borders. By Friday he was demanding “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER” and promising to “MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN (MIGA!)” — a slogan so transparently written for his Israeli-American billionaire patron Miriam Adelson that even his own supporters are laughing through gritted teeth.
This is not leadership. This is chaos in service of a foreign agenda.
The real danger, however, lies in the widening gap between Washington’s stated interests and Tel Aviv’s actual objectives. For Benjamin Netanyahu, this is the culmination of a 40-year Zionist dream: the total destruction of the Islamic Republic. As the Wall Street Journal reported, Israeli strikes have been surgical and merciless — decapitating leadership, bombing command centers, even hitting police facilities — methodically dismantling the regime’s repressive machinery. Netanyahu is also finishing off Hezbollah “root and branch.” Chaos in Iran and Lebanon? Acceptable collateral damage. A Syrian-style civil war next door would actually strengthen Israel’s position by eliminating any coherent Arab or Persian state capable of resisting Greater Israel ideology. History is clear: the Syrian civil war improved Israel’s security precisely because it removed a unified adversary. Netanyahu is betting the same outcome will work in Tehran.
For the United States, this is catastrophic. Iran is a nation of 90 million with deep ethnic fault lines — Kurds, Armenians, Azerbaijanis — who have coexisted peacefully under central authority. Remove that authority and, as the Balkans and post-2003 Iraq proved, people retreat to tribe and sect. Fueling the fire is Iran’s massive armed apparatus: nearly 200,000 Revolutionary Guards, hundreds of thousands of Basij militiamen, and 400,000 regular troops. Many will simply melt away and re-emerge as insurgents, exactly as Saddam’s army did. Libya, 14 years after Gaddafi, still has no single authority. Iraq remains a fractured mess. Destroying a state is child’s play for modern air power; rebuilding one — or even preventing total collapse — has never been America’s strong suit.
Yet Trump, captured by the same AIPAC-driven machine and neocon zombies (Lindsey Graham practically glowed on cable news), keeps lurching toward Netanyahu’s endgame. Iraqi Kurds are now caught in a deadly three-way squeeze, as Axios reported in devastating detail. Iranian Kurds are pressing them to open borders and join the fight. Tehran has issued its first direct threat: allow cross-border attacks or “Zionist regime elements” through your territory and every facility in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq will be hit “on a massive scale” — 200 Shahed drones would be enough, given the Kurds’ lack of air defenses. Israeli operatives are far more aggressive in pushing Iranian Kurdish militias than the Americans, who seem content with “Regime Lite — Venezuela Plus.” Kurdish officials are staying neutral, remembering every previous American betrayal. One told Axios: “We have trust issues from the past and we don’t want to get involved. Who is going to defend us if the Iranian regime ends up surviving this?”
Meanwhile, America’s actual allies are in open disbelief as the Pentagon reroutes weapons shipments to feed this Zionist adventure. European officials, still rebuilding after Ukraine, fear they will be left naked against Russia. Asian partners watch China and North Korea taking notes on U.S. ammunition burn rates. Even Gulf states wonder where their promised air defenses went.
As one northern European official put it anonymously: “The munitions that have been and will be fired are the ones that everybody needs to acquire in large numbers.” Production cannot be magicked overnight. A Patriot missile is not a Tesla. The EU is already rewriting rules to favor European arms makers. Poland is buying South Korean tanks. The old “America as giant Walmart” illusion is dead, and the transatlantic defense relationship is fracturing — all so Israel can pursue its maximalist fantasy.
And the propaganda? Vintage neocon script. First it was “not even a war.” Then “a short war, nothing like Iraq.” Then “not regime change.” Now Trump himself tells TIME magazine he is open to ground troops, has “no time limits,” and wants a “Western-friendly government” — the exact phrase used when the CIA overthrew Iran’s elected leader in 1953 and installed the Shah.
He even bragged to CNN that he doesn’t care about Iranian democracy — just leaders who “treat the United States and Israel well.” This is the same model that produced the 1979 revolution and decades of blowback. Trump’s own words confirm it: unconditional surrender or endless war, with him personally vetting Iran’s next leaders. The “MIGA” acronym practically writes itself.
Americans are already paying the price — higher gas prices, diverted defense budgets, and the looming threat of more domestic retaliation. A horrific shooting in Austin, Texas, last week was explicitly linked by investigators to rage over U.S. strikes on Iran. Yet the same crowd that cheered Iraq (Condoleezza Rice resurrected on Fox News) now insists this time will be different.
It won’t.
Washington still has a narrow window to salvage something: a disarmed, defanged Iran that no longer threatens the region. Qatar stands ready, as always, to mediate. But that requires telling Netanyahu and his AIPAC enablers “enough.” It requires rejecting Greater Israel ideology and the neocon fantasy that America can endlessly remake the Middle East in Israel’s image.
Time is running out. Ethnic tensions are rising. The Revolutionary Guard is preparing for prolonged resistance. Drones are already hitting Gulf infrastructure. The spillover — refugees, oil shocks, new terror networks — will not stop at the Mediterranean or the Persian Gulf.
March 8, 2026
Trump’s Iran Intervention Sends US Gas Prices Climbing Toward Record Highs
American businesses and families are staring down the barrel of another self-inflicted energy crisis, this one entirely of President Donald Trump’s making. Just weeks into his second term, the former real-estate developer turned wartime president has plunged the United States into a costly military showdown with Iran — and the bill is already landing squarely at the gas pump, on airline tickets, and in the supply chains that keep corporate America humming.
The average price of a gallon of regular gasoline across the United States jumped 34 cents in the past week alone to $3.32 on Friday, according to AAA data. Diesel prices have climbed even faster. Industry analysts warn the upward spiral has only just begun. When oil first spiked after Trump ordered strikes on Iran last week, many on Wall Street assumed cooler heads — or at least economic reality — would prevail and force a swift diplomatic off-ramp. That assumption now looks painfully naïve.

Oil prices are climbing
Price per barrel of Brent Crude
Source: S&P Market Intelligence and Oilprice.com DAVID DANYEL / THE NEW YORK BUDGETS

Instead, U.S. and Israeli strikes continue, Iranian drones are hitting energy infrastructure in Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and hundreds of oil tankers sit idle in the Persian Gulf, too terrified to run the gauntlet of the Strait of Hormuz. The result? A textbook supply shock that is hammering businesses large and small.
Qatar’s energy minister, Saad Sherida al-Kaabi, delivered the latest gut punch in an interview with the Financial Times on Friday. He warned that without an immediate de-escalation, Persian Gulf producers will be forced to halt output “within days,” sending global oil prices toward $150 a barrel — more than double pre-war levels. That would push U.S. pump prices back to the $5-a-gallon peaks last seen after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
“If the Trump administration does not do something to restore confidence in ships traveling through the Strait of Hormuz, these prices are going to keep heading up,” said Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy. “I don’t wake up too many mornings and get the chills when I look at the morning oil price numbers. It’s starting to feel like 2022 all over again.”
The pain is already rippling far beyond the neighborhood Exxon station. United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby told investors at an industry conference Friday that jet-fuel costs are climbing so fast that airfares will have to follow — and quickly. Shipping rates are rising in tandem. Travis Maderia, co-founder of New York-based LobsterBoys, which exports live Maine lobsters to restaurants worldwide, put it bluntly: “Transportation is a big part of our business. When airline prices go up, the cost of sending lobsters overseas can be dramatically impacted.”

Oil derivatives are embedded in everything from plastic packaging and semiconductor chemicals to industrial gases. BloombergNEF natural resources research chief David Doherty notes that Iran’s cheap drone attacks have made defending scattered energy infrastructure far harder than in past Middle East conflicts. “It is harder to protect oil infrastructure,” he said. “Defending the same breadth of space has become much more difficult than it was in the past.”
Even Trump’s attempts to calm markets have fallen flat. On Truth Social he doubled down: “There will be no deal with Iran except UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced a 30-day waiver allowing India to keep buying Russian oil and floated “unsanctioning” more Russian barrels on Fox News. The president also offered political risk insurance to tanker companies and hinted at U.S. Navy escorts through the Strait.
Market research firm Macquarie told clients the same day that those promises look hollow: escort vessels are “often unavailable due to other military priorities such as missile intercepts or striking Iran.” The firm warned of “an extremely large oil price move” within weeks if the Hormuz chokepoint stays blocked.
Restarting shuttered Gulf production won’t be simple either. Vidya Mani, visiting supply-chain scholar at Cornell University’s SC Johnson College of Business, explained: “It is not as simple as flipping a switch back on. You have to get drilling operations going again. You have to get workers back in.
When there is a conflict like this, workers leave and the number that come back in may not be as many as you need.” She and other analysts now see $150 oil as a realistic near-term scenario — levels last touched in July 2008.
Alex Jacquez, policy chief at the progressive-leaning but economically focused Groundwork Collaborative (and a former Biden White House energy adviser), captured the growing frustration on Wall Street: “The markets are starting to realize there may be no off-ramp here. There was this thinking that if oil prices start to soar that Trump would back down in Iran. But that is not the way things are aligning. The president has shown no appetite for changing course.”
For an administration that campaigned on “lower prices” and “pro-business” policies, the optics are disastrous. A Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll last month found most Americans already view health care, cars, and housing as unaffordable.
Republicans made lowering the cost of living the centerpiece of their midterm strategy. Now Trump’s foreign policy gamble is delivering the opposite — and doing so at the worst possible moment for corporate balance sheets and consumer wallets.
The irony is thick. In 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine, energy markets were disrupted by an external aggressor. This time, as Jacquez noted, “we didn’t choose to do this ourselves” — yet the economic damage looks disturbingly familiar.
March 7, 2026
Intel Says Regime Change in Iran Is ‘Unlikely’
A classified assessment produced by the National Intelligence Council has concluded that even a large-scale U.S. military assault on Iran would be unlikely to topple the Islamic Republic’s deeply entrenched clerical and military establishment, according to three people familiar with the document’s contents.
The sobering intelligence analysis, completed roughly one week before the United States and Israel launched their joint military operation on Feb. 28, directly undercuts the Trump administration’s increasingly vocal ambitions to “clean out” Iran’s leadership and install a new ruler acceptable to Washington.
The report examined succession scenarios under both a narrowly targeted campaign against senior Iranian figures and a broader offensive against leadership compounds and government institutions. In both cases, U.S. spy agencies determined that Iran’s clerical and military apparatus would swiftly follow long-established protocols to ensure continuity of power — even after the killing of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on the war’s opening day.

The prospect of Iran’s fragmented opposition groups seizing control of the country was judged “unlikely,” the people said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the highly sensitive findings. The National Intelligence Council, whose analysts represent the collective judgment of all 18 U.S. intelligence agencies, produced the document as a forward-looking assessment of potential outcomes.
The CIA referred questions about the report to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which declined to comment. The White House would not confirm whether President Donald Trump was briefed on the assessment before green-lighting the operation, which has rapidly expanded to include submarine warfare in the Indian Ocean and counter-missile operations near NATO member Turkey.
White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly pushed back sharply, saying in a statement: “President Trump and the administration have clearly outlined their goals with regard to Operation Epic Fury: destroy Iran’s ballistic missiles and production capacity, demolish their navy, end their ability to arm proxies, and prevent them from ever obtaining a nuclear weapon. The Iranian regime is being absolutely crushed.”
Doubts about the Iranian opposition’s ability to take power have surfaced in recent reporting by The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, but the NIC’s specific analysis of both limited and expansive military scenarios — and its conclusion that the regime’s institutions would endure — has not been previously disclosed.

People demonstrating in support of the government in Tehran on Saturday. (The New York Times)
Suzanne Maloney, a veteran Iran scholar and vice president at the Brookings Institution, said the assessment reflects deep institutional knowledge of how power works inside the Islamic Republic. “It sounds like a deeply informed assessment of the Iranian system and the institutions and processes that have been established for many years,” Maloney told The Washington Post.
The report does not appear to have modeled more extreme scenarios, such as the insertion of U.S. ground troops or the arming of Iranian Kurdish groups to spark a wider rebellion. It also remains unclear whether the “large-scale” campaign analyzed in the document precisely matches the scope of current U.S.-Israeli operations.
Inside Iran, the succession process anticipated by the NIC is already unfolding under intense pressure from the ongoing bombing campaign. The replacement of the supreme leader is formally the responsibility of the Assembly of Experts, a powerful clerical body, though senior commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and other security figures wield significant influence.
Intense speculation has centered on whether the assembly will choose Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba Khamenei. The IRGC has been actively promoting his candidacy, but it has encountered resistance from other power centers, including Ali Larijani, secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, according to a Western security official.
As the conflict enters its second week, Trump has continued to escalate his rhetoric. In a Truth Social post he demanded Iran’s “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER” and has repeatedly suggested he should play a direct role in selecting Tehran’s next leader. Speaking to journalists, Trump dismissed Mojtaba Khamenei as “incompetent” and a “lightweight,” adding that Washington wants leaders who will not simply rebuild Iran’s nuclear and missile programs. “We want them to have a good leader,” he told NBC News. “We have some people who I think would do a good job.”
Iran’s Parliament speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, rejected any foreign role in the process. In a post on X, he declared: “The fate of dear Iran, which is more precious than life, will be determined solely by the proud Iranian nation, not by [Jeffrey] Epstein’s gang” — a pointed reference to the late sex offender who was once a social acquaintance of Trump.
Current and former U.S. officials say there are few visible signs of a mass popular uprising or significant cracks within Iran’s government or security forces. Iranian security services killed thousands of demonstrators during nationwide protests in January driven by economic collapse. Trump has publicly advised the Iranian people to “shelter in place” until the U.S.-Israeli campaign concludes.

People attend Friday prayer in Tehran. (Majid Asgaripour/WANA/via REUTERS)
Experts say the NIC’s conclusions severely limit Trump’s leverage to dictate political outcomes. “Bending the knee to Trump would go against everything they stand for,” said Holly Dagres, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “The upper echelons of the clerical establishment are ideological, and so their modus operandi is to resist American imperialism.”
Maloney of Brookings echoed that view: “There’s no other force within Iran that can confront the remaining power that the regime has. Even if they’re not able to project that power very effectively against their neighbors, they can certainly dominate inside the country.”
The intelligence community’s assessment arrives at a moment when the Trump administration has raised the possibility of a prolonged campaign. Senior officials have privately described the operation as one that has “only just begun,” even as public messaging continues to emphasize rapid, decisive gains. The classified report’s warning — that neither short nor extended military action is likely to produce the kind of clean regime change the president has repeatedly telegraphed — adds a layer of internal skepticism to an already volatile conflict.
March 7, 2026
Trump Team Bashed Europe for a Year. Now It Needs Their Support in the Iran War.
BRUSSELS — President Donald Trump’s administration spent the past year dismissing Europeans as pathetic and irrelevant. Now, as he wages a war alongside Israel to force regime change in Iran, he wants Europe to cheer him on.
European leaders, who distanced themselves from the U.S. attack in its early hours, are ramping up their response to a crisis spreading beyond Iran. France, Italy and others are deploying military reinforcements to the region to defend their bases and partners. Britain has now allowed U.S. forces to use its bases to block Tehran’s retaliation. But the European moves so far fall short of the applause Trump is seeking for an assault without clear end that is violently reshaping the region.
The White House is not exactly trying to forge a coalition of the unwilling. Washington did not consult European allies before the attack and has not asked them to join in bombing Tehran. But the administration wants access to strategic European air bases and logistics hubs to facilitate its aerial barrage. And Trump is rebuking countries that don’t offer unflinching support, like Britain, or anyone who takes a forceful stand against the war, namely Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez.
“It’s taken three or four days for us to work out where we can land. … So we are very surprised,” Trump said. “This is not the age of Churchill.”

U.S. President Donald Trump meets German Chancellor Friedrich Merz at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., June 5, 2025. (REUTERS/Kent Nishimura)
The fragility of the transatlantic relationship is on display as European leaders avoid criticizing an American president who is sensitive to it, while he strikes an Iranian leadership that they too want to see weakened. The continent’s leaders are wary, however, of a conflict unleashed by their most powerful ally that could bring untold ramifications to their doorstep — and of following America into yet another war in the Middle East, which has little, if any, upside with their voters.
So, while Berlin backs Trump and Madrid stands up to him, Europe’s top leaders have delivered a medley of barely consistent responses. Many are twisting themselves into knots to address the conflict while maintaining a veneer of neutrality, with Trump already unpopular across much of the continent.
It was only weeks ago that Trump threatened to seize Greenland from NATO ally Denmark.
With few exceptions, the balancing act leaves European leaders “half in, half out,” ignoring their purported values, and tilting to the side of a U.S. president they can hardly influence, said Nathalie Tocci, director of the Rome-based Institute for International Affairs.
The result, she said, is tacit endorsement of a campaign for regime change that threatens to bring more chaos to the region, where Europeans have a sizable military footprint and hundreds of thousands of citizens.
The war in Iran began “unbeknownst to the world” and was not a decision “shared by anyone,” Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto told lawmakers in Rome on Thursday. “Of course, it was well outside the rules of international law. We don’t need to say it.”

Crosetto, a member of the party led by Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, one of Trump’s closest allies in Europe, appeared to be addressing criticism of the European response — and the apparent lack of U.S. warning to allies, which left him stuck in Dubai when the strikes started.
“No country” in Europe or elsewhere, he added, “can convince the U.S. and Israel to stop this war.”
European capitals were not asked to join the attack on Iran in advance, and they have not taken part in combat, said three senior European diplomats, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to share sensitive discussions.
Trump has praised one European leader, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who visited Washington this week after he declared there was little use “lecturing” about the illegality of war.
Back home, however, Merz faced European criticism for abandoning support of international law, which he has touted on Ukraine and Greenland, and for not defending Spain from Trump’s criticism in the Oval Office.
“Clueless tourist stranded in crisis zone” is how one German front page described Merz’s trip to Washington.
The optics contrast with European pledges to develop unity and independence from the United States on security matters. “Surely your sovereignty begins by speaking your mind,” Tocci said. She noted several European leaders were so careful not to criticize the U.S. attack that it seemed simpler for them — however absurd — to ignore it in their initial reactions.

People demonstrating in support of the government in Tehran on Saturday. (The New York Times)
Spain’s Sánchez — who has warned his European peers for months against projecting double standards or ignoring security threats from the bloc’s southern borders — has mounted the only vehement public opposition to Trump.
Still, the Europeans are not sitting this out, as the war hikes oil prices and risks spurring a new wave of refugees. French President Emmanuel Macron, deploying a surge in air defenses and warships to the Middle East, pledged to protect E.U. member Cyprus and Persian Gulf nations, which have come under fire from Iran’s retaliation. Macron also said the U.S. attack broke international law, and that he is trying to broker another ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon, where Israeli strikes have displaced hundreds of thousands of people.
The French military said Paris has allowed the U.S. to use a base in France for its aircraft, so long as it’s not used to “participate in any way” in U.S. strikes on Iran.
Even Spain, locked in a showdown with Washington for refusing access to Spanish bases, announced it was dispatching a frigate to help Cyprus and demonstrate “commitment to the defense of the European Union.”
Trump was so furious with Spain that he threatened to “embargo” the country, although singling out Spain would be tricky, since the 27-nation European Union trades as a bloc.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, whose about-face allowed the U.S. to use British bases, is also under pressure from his Labour Party to disavow the war. He maintained that the decision is “limited.”
European bases are far closer to the conflict, including the Diego Garcia base in the Chagos Islands, which Britain controls, in the Indian Ocean. In a drawn-out conflict, those facilities would let the U.S. move jets, fuel or weaponry more quickly. Washington has used European bases in past Middle East offensives, including for rotating troops during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
A senior British official said the proximity of the bases to Iran would “enable U.S. forces to take out more missile sites and command-and-control units at a greater rate.”

A USAF B1-B bomber prepares to land at RAF Fairford on Friday. (Toby Melville/Reuters)
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte praised Trump on Fox News and Newsmax in recent days, insisting that allies support the U.S. war on a “massive scale” — an assertion Spain has rejected. But Rutte seemed to succeed with a core element of his role these days: keeping Trump pleased. “Thank you to our great NATO Secretary General!” the president posted on social media.
The Trump administration has made clear it expects Europeans to help Washington, given America’s longtime defensive shield for the continent. Ukraine’s European backers also rely on U.S. weapons for the fight against Russia.
Despite uneasiness over a long war in the Middle East, European officials have their own misgivings with Iran, including over its ballistic missiles and ties to Russia, and they have heaped blame almost entirely on Tehran.
Yet the fallout could hit closer than in America. Some E.U. countries, such as Cyprus, are within missile range, as is Turkey, which is a NATO member.
For European politicians, joining a U.S. war will be unpopular after the stained legacies of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, and the deadly withdrawal from Afghanistan. Following Israel into war will also be divisive in many European nations, with some European officials having accused Israel of genocide in Gaza.
As they deploy reinforcements to the region, officials cast this as a means to safeguard citizens and Europe’s energy needs.
Italy’s Meloni described Persian Gulf partners as “vital” to the country’s energy supply. Above all, she said, “there are tens of thousands of Italians in that area, and approximately 2,000 Italian soldiers whom we want to, and must, protect.”
Sánchez, meanwhile, urged Europe to remember the fallout of past Western interventions. “You cannot answer one illegality with another,” he said in a speech, “because that is how the great catastrophes of humanity begin.”
March 7, 2026